Amy and Isabelle (38 page)

The thought that Mr. Robertson had returned to town and
not
attempted to find her did not stay long in Amy’s mind. Instead she became more and more certain that this man who loved her (“You know you’ll always be loved, don’t you?”), who had touched his mouth to her newborn breasts with such loving and exquisite tenderness, gazed at her naked middle with such
seriousness
, had returned to town not to clean out his classroom (which made no sense, he would have done that earlier) but to
find her
. It seemed to Amy, whose mind was always filled with him, and who assumed his mind was filled with her, that Mr. Robertson had gone to the school in hopes of finding her there, or near there, because she had in fact walked by the school compulsively since being released from the mill, the way one is compelled to return again and again to scenes of earlier exaltations.

She had gone there today even, after buying her cigarettes and lifting the lipstick, walking past the brick building cautiously, for she did not want to be observed again by the kind janitor, Mr. Gaines. But it was Saturday and Mr. Gaines would not be working. No one would be working, Amy thought, walking up the south lawn toward the school’s front door; but there was Puddy Mandel walking across the parking lot, and so she had hidden herself behind the lilac bushes, peering toward the windows of Mr. Robertson’s classroom—and had seen nothing.

Finally she had walked back into town and then over the bridge toward the Basin, feeling exposed on the sidewalks of Oyster Point,
feeling on some instinctive level that the broken, tarry sidewalks of the Basin provided greater anonymity, as well as the chance of running into Paul Bellows, who might at least be free to drive her around in his car. She couldn’t rid herself, however, of the thought that if she walked around the back roads enough that day, Mr. Robertson, driving by, would find her. But by four o’clock she was tired and hungry, and she stepped into a phone booth to call Paul Bellows.

It turned out to be the right thing to do. Paul was just headed out the door—he had to drive to Hennecock to see some insurance guy about his car; he’d be glad to have her come along. “I’m kind of hungry,” she confessed, pressing her fingers against the glass of the telephone booth while the cigarette she held sent a spiral of pale blue smoke directly toward her eyes, so that she turned her face away and therefore just missed her mother walking by, “but I don’t have much money on me.”

“No problem,” Paul said. “We’ll stop somewhere.”

Hanging up, Amy thought maybe Stacy had been too hasty in dumping the guy.

ISABELLE HAD DELIBERATELY gone to the rather dingy florist shop on Main Street in the Basin rather than the more open, lovely one in Oyster Point in order to avoid the chance of bumping into Emma Clark. She had a horror of being “witnessed” in her hostess preparations. It was Emma, after all, who had to be won over. It was Emma who might say (if all went well, God willing), driving home tonight, “Really, Avery, what a shame we never paid more attention to Isabelle all these years.” And it was Emma who might get on the phone tomorrow and say to whoever it was she gossiped with that they had misjudged Isabelle Goodrow; that having spent a lovely evening in her home, she realized that Isabelle was actually an awfully nice woman, she’d made that Crane cottage a sweet little home and …

And what? Isabelle was tired from having slept poorly the night before. She was making far too much of this, she thought, nodding a greeting to the old man who ran this dingy florist shop, and there was very little here to choose from—
plastic
flowers, for heaven’s sake; she ought to have simply snipped a few flowers from her own back garden.
But there by the cash register was an abundance of yellow tulips. What a surprise so late in the summer. Isabelle reached her hand toward them; yes, she would take six of these. They were terribly expensive. She stood silently while the man rolled them with great elaborateness in two sheets of flowered paper, and then she carried them to her car carefully in the crook of her arm, as though holding a newly swaddled baby.

But what a smart choice after all! When she was through arranging and rearranging, taking down from the cupboard all the vases she owned, pewter, cut-glass, china, the tulips were a sight to behold. For there on the kitchen table three of them sang out cheerfully; two more on the mantel in the living room, and in the little half-bathroom Isabelle placed the slender pewter vase with one yellow tulip on the back of the commode.

The telephone rang. A sudden fear that Avery would be calling to say Emma wasn’t feeling well—oh, it seemed unbearable.

But it was Amy, who said, “Hi, Mom,” snapping her gum.

“Please, Amy.” Isabelle dropped her eyelids, pressing a finger to the bridge of her nose. “If you’re going to chew gum, do it with your mouth
closed
.”

“Sorry.” A car honked.

“Where are you?” Isabelle asked.

“Outside the library. With Stacy. How late are the Clarks going to be at our house?”

“Well, I don’t know. Ten o’clock maybe? It’s hard to say.” Isabelle herself had been wondering how long the Clarks would stay. How long did people stay when they went for dessert? Certainly if they left by nine o’clock you could count the evening a failure.

“Anyway,” Amy said, “I’m staying at Stacy’s house tonight. We’re probably going to a movie.”

“What movie.”

“I’m not sure. Some kid movie for her little brothers in Hennecock, I think.”

“But Amy. You didn’t take anything with you. A nightgown, underwear. What about your toothbrush?”

“Mom,” said Amy, with obvious annoyance. “I won’t die, you know. Jesum Crow. Look, I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Please. Please do.” Isabelle turned her head to glance at the tulips on the table. In the warmth of the kitchen they had opened further. “And please don’t snap that gum, Amy, in front of Stacy’s parents.”

She hung up feeling uneasy. Shaking confectionery sugar into a bowl for the frosting, Isabelle pressed her lips together. It would take time, trusting Amy again. That’s what happened when you lied to someone; you forfeited their trust. Amy knew that, and it’s why she was annoyed. Anyway, it would be—to be honest—a relief not having her around when the Clarks showed up.

Chapter

23

AT A DINER in Hennecock Paul Bellows ate a plateful of fried clams and said he hoped they didn’t end up making him shit his brains out later. “It’s happened before,” he said, without elaboration.

Amy sat back while the waitress filled her cup with water. She had finished her hot dog and now ran her fingertip over her plate. With a wave of his hand Paul offered her some of his fried clams, but she shook her head. “Do you mind if I smoke while you’re still eating?” she asked. She had been smoking all afternoon and had gone past the point of enjoying it; still, she felt compelled.

“Nope.” Paul tipped the bottle of ketchup over his plate, whacking it hard. When a mound of ketchup slid onto the edge of his plate he licked the top of the ketchup bottle and screwed the top back on.

Up front the cash register rang. Steam rose from the coffeepots, dishes clattered as a table was cleared. Paul ate his clams, smothering each one in the mound of ketchup before pushing it into his mouth, ketchup remaining on his lips as he chewed. He paused to drink from his Coke, ice cubes clunking as he tipped the cup, then returned to his clams. This steady, indifferent way he attacked his food was almost mesmerizing to Amy. She reached over and took one of the clams, dipping it in the ketchup as he had done.

“I would have married her, you know.”

The clam belly, beneath its fried batter, squished unpleasantly in Amy’s mouth.

“Her parents think I’m dumb.”

Amy spit into her napkin. “Her parents are kind of queer,” she offered, tucking the napkin under her plate.

“Her father’s a rat-fuck, the mother’s just spacey and weird.” Paul finished eating and tapped a cigarette from his pack. “What do you want to do?”

“Drive around I guess.”

Paul nodded. She thought he looked kind of anxious and sad.

ISABELLE LAY ON her bed, showered and powdered, her eyes closed. Outside her window the birds sang. She opened her eyes and closed them again, remembering how when Amy was very small and sometimes had trouble with her afternoon nap, Isabelle would bring her into this room and lie with her on this bed. “Mommy’s going to sleep too,” she would say, but Amy had never been fooled. When Isabelle opened her eyes the little girl would be lying quietly, staring at her. “Close your eyes,” Isabelle would say, and Amy always did, her tender eyelids quivering with the effort of this obedience. In a few moments they would open once more, mother and daughter caught looking at each other in the silent room.

ON THE TOP floor of an apartment house on Main Street, Lenny Mandel was once again undressing. He had not intended to come here today; it was Saturday, and his mother expected him home to help with her bridge club tonight. He had gone into school to do some work and then stopped here afterward to say a quick hello. But when Linda reached into the refrigerator, the sight of her thighs, pale and bare emerging as her red cotton dress tugged up over her rump, caused him to inwardly moan; seeing the expression on his face when she turned, Linda smiled shyly and walked toward him.

His constant need to insert himself in her—penis, fingers, tongue, it
hardly mattered—was baffling to him. (He would have put his fingers down her throat if he could have done so without hurting her.) With his eyes shut now, squeezing her, running his face down over her middle, he wished he could unzip her skin, place his entire self inside her body, make love to her like that, inside out instead of from the outside in. It wasn’t normal, he thought, to desire a person so much; his world felt crazy and dark now, he was in a frenzy all the time.

She moved with him to the bed, spreading her legs wide—such open generosity. He gazed at this magnificent gift on the flowered sheets; he wanted to split her open, crack her up the middle like a lobster claw.

Afterward he apologized. He always did. She shook her head gently. “Lenny,” she said, “you’re just a very passionate guy.”

He wondered why it no longer made him happy, and why he continued to crave it in the face of this.

AT THE SAME time that Lenny Mandel was buttoning his pants and Isabelle Goodrow was descending the stairs to eat a light and early supper so she wouldn’t be dizzy or have a headache by the time the Clarks arrived, Dottie Brown, on the other side of the river, was following her husband mutely from room to room watching as he put things in a duffel bag. In the hallway he stopped and looked at her, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “I’ll wait and go in the morning,” he said, “if you want me to.”

THERE WAS PLENTY of light left in the sky, but already the day was beginning to end. They had been driving without speaking for quite a while, listening to songs on the radio, played loudly, when Paul reached over to turn the radio off and in the sudden silence that followed said, “It gets me how her parents think I’m some dumb-fuck jerk.”

Amy turned her head to look at him.

“My uncle might make me part owner of the business someday,” he said, and then dragged deeply on his cigarette. He glanced over at Amy and she nodded.

“Hey, fuck it.” Paul tossed his cigarette out the window.

The road they were on had become dirt, and they were bumping past fields on one side, woods on the other. “Where are we?” Amy asked.

“I was wondering myself.” Paul squinted past Amy, looking through her open window. “This probably belongs to one of those farms we passed. Doesn’t look like it’s been farmed though.”

“They rotate fields,” Amy said. “The soil gets tired. That’s why farmers need so many acres. Half of them just sit and rest every few years.”

Paul grinned at her. “You do good in school?”

“Okay. Not great.”

“I did okay in school,” Paul said. “I never flunked anything.”

The road was getting narrow. Branches were scratching the car at times; a rock clunked up against the bottom. Paul drove more slowly, then stopped. “Gotta look for a place to turn around. It’s not like this baby is some jeep, you know.”

Amy nodded, sticking her head out the window. “Can you back up?”

Paul turned to look behind him. “Guess I’ll have to.” He said this tiredly. “Jesus, we’re in the middle of nowhere.” He moved back around and switched the car off, then looked at her, hanging his head. “Want to give me a little kiss, Amy?”

She leaned her face forward, feeling sorry for him, feeling some shared shadow of desolation; she thought of Hansel and Gretel, two kids lost in the woods.

It was his breathing that alerted her, and the way he began twisting his head, turning his mouth back and forth over hers. She didn’t want to be rude.

He pulled back and gave her that disconnected grin. He cocked his head, looking down at her hand. “So, Ame,” he said, “you want to …”

Her heart flipped steadily, quickly. The air from the open car window smelled wet, autumnal. She felt responsible; she was the one who wanted to drive around, wanted to kill the evening until the Clarks went home—then she could walk in late and just tell her mother she wasn’t staying at Stacy’s after all. Or maybe Paul had a couch she could sleep on—she hadn’t really thought it through. But now he wanted … to do stuff … and she felt suddenly that maybe she had been using him. His car might be scratched up right now on account of her too.

“Oh,” she said, faltering, “see, well. I like you and everything. But it’s weird because—”

“It’s not weird,” he said, his grin spreading now, “it’s pretty natural, if you want to know the truth.” He leaned forward and began to kiss her again.

Amy turned her face away. “See,” she said. “I just wouldn’t feel right. I mean, you know, I’m Stacy’s friend and everything. Oh God, I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay. Hey, don’t worry about it.” He touched her face, spread his fingers through her hair. “You’re a nice person, Amy.” He exhaled loudly, raising his eyebrows. “I’m just dying to … it would’ve been nice, but it’s okay.” He moved back, opening his door. “I gotta piss bad. By the way,” he added, sliding out of the car, then leaning back in through the window. “Didn’t you used to have really long hair?”